The Crimson Petal and the White (98 page)

‘All right then,’ Miss Sugar declares, clasping her hands together. ‘Arithmetic.’

That afternoon, William Rackham answers his own correspondence. He answers it in a painstaking, rather clumsy hand: but he manages. By folding his crooked ring finger over his middle one, he keeps its tip from smudging the ink, and by holding the pen almost vertical between his thumb and forefinger, he can achieve quite a bit of fluency.

I have read your letter
, he writes.
And now I’m damn well replying to it
, he thinks. The direct connection between his brain and his pen has been restored, however torturously.

But never mind the discomfort. What a blessing it is to be independent – and what a relief to be able to tell that blackguard Pankey exactly what’s what, without Sugar taking all the sting out of his words. Some people
deserve
to be stung! Grover Pankey especially! If Rackham Perfumeries is to survive into the next century and beyond, it will need a strong hand at the helm now – a hand that doesn’t stand for nonsense. How dare Pankey suggest that ivory is bound to crack when it’s carved as thin as Rackham’s pots require?

Perhaps you have lately engaged the services of a lower class of elephant, he
scrawls. The pots you showed me in Yarmouth were sturdy enough. I suggest you
return to that pedigree of beast.

Yours …

Ah well, perhaps not ‘yours’ much longer. But there’s more than one ivory merchant in the world, Mr Grover Hanky-Pankey!

William signs his name, and frowns. The signature looks wrong, a childish approximation of his old one, inferior even to Sugar’s sleepiest forgery. Well, what of it? The way he signed his name before he took control of Rackham Perfumeries was different from the way he signed it after, and the signature on letters he wrote as a schoolboy bore little relation to the signature on his wedding certificate. Life goes on. Change, as the Prime Minister himself has said, is constant.

He seals the letter, and is gripped by the urge to post it at once, to hurry out to Portobello Road and slip it into the nearest pillar-box, in case Sugar should come unexpectedly into the room and spy the letter lying here. The fresh air would do him good, anyhow. Ever since the hullabaloo yesterday he’s been restless, searching for a good reason to leave the gloom of his house, to walk down a public street with a spring in his step. Should he stay or should he go?

For a little while longer he delays, and the satisfaction of tearing into Pankey evaporates like essence of tuberose flying off a handkerchief. He reflects on the long, hard journey he has made since taking the reins of this perfumery. Again the vision of William Rackham the author and critic returns to haunt him, and he feels a pang of regret for the man who never was, the man whose pen was feared and admired and who set fire to boring correspondents with the tip of his cigar. That man had perfectly formed fingers, long golden hair, a radiant wife, a keen nose not for tainted jasmine but for the great Art and Literature of the future. Instead, here he is, a widower, a stammerer, grunting with the effort of penning his own signature on letters to merchants he loathes. The bonds he once enjoyed with his family, friends and fellow travellers: all altered beyond recognition. Altered beyond rescue? If he doesn’t make amends now while he still has the chance, a once-intimate relationship will sour into estrangement or even hostility.

So, he swallows his pride, leaves the house, commandeers Cheesman for a ride into the city, and travels direct to Torrington Mews, Bloomsbury, in the hope of catching Mr Philip Bodley at home.

Five hours later, William Rackham is a happy man. Yes, for the first time since Agnes’s death, or even – yes, why not admit it? – long before, he is a truly happy man. The passage of a mere five hours has ferried him from the brink of despond to the shore of contentment.

He’s strolling along a narrow street in Soho, after sundown, slightly drunk, accosted from all sides by pedlars, urchins and whores wanting his money for grubby goods not worth tuppence. Their leering, gap-toothed faces and gesticulating sleeves ought to fill him with anxiety, given how recently he was beaten half to death by just such ruffians in the dark streets of Frome. But no, he’s unafraid of being attacked; he is fearless, for he has his friends with him. Yes, not just Bodley, but Ashwell as well! There’s really nothing, nothing in this world, quite as comforting as the company of men whom one has known since boyhood.

‘We’re founding our own publishing house, Bill,’ says Ashwell, his head swivelling in curiosity as he’s passed by a hawker wearing twelve hats, with two others twirling on his fingers.

Bodley thrusts the pommel of his cane playfully at one of the prostitutes waving at them from the doorways. A small half-asleep boy, minding a cart of worthless jugs and pots he’s been instructed to sell, flinches for fear the cane is a projectile about to smack into his snot-encrusted nose.

‘We couldn’t find anyone willing to publish our next book—’ Bodley explains.

‘
—Art As Understood by the Working Man—
’

‘—so we’re going to damn well publish it ourselves.’

‘
Art as
… ? Publish it yourselves … ? But why … ?’ asks William, shaking his head in amused befuddlement. ‘From the title, it sounds to be a … a less contentious book than your previous ones …’

‘Don’t you believe it!’ crows Ashwell.

‘It’s a brilliantly simple idea!’ declares Bodley. ‘We got hold of a wide variety of rude working folk – chimneysweeps, fish merchants, kitchen-maids, tobacconists, match-sellers, and so forth – and we read them bits of Ruskin’s
Academy Notes …
’

‘… and showed them engravings of the paintings …’

‘… and then asked them their opinion!’ Bodley contorts his face in a caricature of donkeyish intellect, and pretends to be examining an engraving held at arm’s length. ‘Wot you say dis one’s name wos? Afferdighty?’

‘A Greek lady, sir,’ mock-explains Ashwell, instantly playing the straight man to Bodley’s buffoon. ‘A goddess.’

‘Greek? Blimey. Where’s ’er black moustache, then?’

Whereupon Bodley re-composes his face into a different character, a more thoughtful man, scratching his head doubtfully. ‘Whe-e-ell, maybe I’m hignorant – but this Afferdighty ’as got mighty queer dugs in my hopinion. She’s got ’em where I never seen dugs on any woman down
my
street – an’ I seen plenty!’

Rackham laughs uproariously – a good belly laugh such as he’s not enjoyed since … well, not since he was
last
out with his friends.

‘But why on earth,’ he demands, ‘are your usual publishers refusing to publish this one? It’ll make them just as much money, I’m sure!’

‘That’s precisely the problem,’ smirks Bodley.

‘Every one of our books has lost money!’ declares Ashwell proudly.

‘No!’ protests William.

‘Yes!’ cries Ashwell. ‘Oodles!’ And he laughs like a hyena.

William reels to one side, misjudging his footing on the cobbles, and Bodley catches him. He’s a little drunker than he’d thought.

‘Lost money? But that’s impossible!’ he insists. ‘I’ve met so many people who’ve read your books …’

‘Oh, no doubt you’ve met every single one of ’em,’ says Ashwell breezily. Not twenty feet away, a gin-sozzled old woman slaps her elfin pigeon-chested husband hard against his sparse-haired skull. He falls like a ninepin, to a scattered chorus of guffaws.

‘
The Great Social Evil
will recoup its costs, in time,’ qualifies Bodley, ‘thanks to masturbating students and frustrated widows like Emmeline Fox …’

‘But nobody bought
The Efficacy of Prayer
except the miserable old nincompoops we quoted in it.’

William is still grinning, but his mind, honed by his long year’s experience as a businessman, is having some difficulty with the sums.

‘So let me see if I understand you,’ he says. ‘Instead of letting a publisher lose money, you mean to lose money yourselves …’

Bodley and Ashwell make identical dismissive hand gestures, to show they’ve considered this matter carefully.

‘We’ll publish pornography too,’ declares Ashwell, ‘to cover the losses incurred by our worthier books. Pornography of the rankest order. The demand is immense, Bill; the whole of England is desperate for sodomy!’

‘Yes, the
arse
-whole!’ puns Bodley.

‘We’ll publish a guide for men-about-town that’s updated each month!’ continues Ashwell, his cheeks flushed with enthusiasm. ‘Not like that damned useless
More Sprees
, which gives you a cockstand reading about some girl, and you go to the house, only to find she’s dead, or the place has gone to the dogs, or it’s full of Pentecostals!’

William’s smile fades. The reference to
More Sprees in London
has reminded him of another reason why he and his chums became estranged in the first place: Bodley and Ashwell were aware of a prostitute called Sugar, a prostitute who abruptly disappeared from circulation. What might they think if they visited the Rackham house and heard the name ‘Miss Sugar’ mentioned by a servant? Highly unlikely, but still William changes the subject.

‘You know,’ he says, ‘I’ve been chained to my desk so long, it’s bliss to be out on the town with my old friends.’ (His stutter, he notes, is completely gone: all it takes is a few drinks and the right company!)

‘
Fidus Achates
!’ cries Bodley, slapping William on the back. ‘Remember the time the bullers chased us all the way from Parker’s Piece to our set?’

‘Remember the time the proctor found that pretty slut Lizzie sleeping in the Master’s Lodge?’

‘Happy days, happy days,’ says William, though he has no memory of the incident.

‘That’s the spirit,’ beams Ashwell. ‘But
these
days can be every bit as happy, Bill, if you let ’em. Your perfume business is locomoting along at fearsome speed, I hear. You don’t need to be stoking it every minute of the day, what?’

‘Ah, you’d be surprised,’ sighs William. ‘Everything threatens to fall apart constantly. Everything. Constantly! Nothing in this damn world takes care of itself.’

‘Steady man, steady. Some things are wonderfully uncomplicated. Shove any old cock into any old cunt, and the rest happens automatically.’

William grunts agreement, but in his heart he’s far from sure. Lately, he has come to dread Sugar’s overtures of love, for his pego has remained flaccid when he would most wish to have use of it. Is it still in working order? It gets stiff at inconvenient times, particularly in his sleep, but lets him down when the moment is ripe. How much longer can he keep Sugar ignorant of the fact that he’s ceased, it seems, to be fully a man? How many more nights can he plead exhaustion or the lateness of the hour?

‘If I don’t keep my wits about me,’ he complains, ‘Rackham Perfumeries will be extinct by the time the century’s out. And it’s not as if I have anyone to pass it on to.’

Ashwell pauses to buy an apple from a girl he likes the look of. He gives her sixpence, much more than she’s asking, and she bows, almost spilling her remaining apples out of her basket.

‘Thank you, poppet,’ he winks, biting into the firm flesh, and walks on. ‘So …’ he remarks to William, his mouth mumbly with pulp, ‘So you don’t want to marry Constance, is that it?’

William stops in his tracks, astounded.

‘Constance?’

‘Our dear Lady Bridgelow,’ says Ashwell, making the effort to enunciate clearly, as if Rackham’s bafflement may be nothing more than a problem with diction.

William sways forward, contemplates the ground, his vision blurring in and out of focus. A criss-cross pattern of furry muck is stuck to the cobbles, either horse-dung with a high quotient of thistles or the much-dispersed vestiges of a squashed dog’s pelt.

‘I … I wasn’t aware that Constance had any desire to marry me.’

Bodley and Ashwell groan good-naturedly, and Bodley grabs him by the shoulder of his coat, jerking it in exasperation.

‘Come on, Bill, d’you expect her to get down on her bended knee and ask you herself? She has her pride.’

William digests this as they walk on. They’ve turned the corner into King Street, a somewhat wider thoroughfare. Prostitutes on both sides wave to them, confident that this evening’s policeman has been amply persuaded to spend his energies on pickpockets and brawlers.

‘Best fuck in London ’ere!’ shouts a tipsy trollop.

‘Getcher roast chestnuts ’ere!’ bawls a man on the opposite footpath.

Bodley pauses, not for the chestnuts or the trollop, but because he’s just stepped on something squishy. He lifts his left shoe and peers down at the sole, trying to determine whether the thing – now mingled with the oily mud between the cobblestones – was a turd or merely a lump of rotten fruit.

‘What do you think, Philip?’ says Ashwell, grinning over his shoulder at the drunken lass who’s still blowing him kisses. ‘Ready for a bit of fun?’

‘Always, Edward, always. What about the lovely Apollonia?’ As an aside to William, he explains: ‘We’ve found a cracker of a girl, Bill, an absolute cracker – a woolly-haired African. She’s at Mrs Jardine’s house. Her cunt is dark purple, like a passionfruit, and they’ve taught her to speak like a debutante from Belgravia: it’s the most comical thing!’

‘Try her while the trying’s good, Bill: she’ll be snaffled by some diplomat or ambassador soon, and disappear into the bowels of Westminster!’

Bodley and Ashwell stand topper to topper and consult their fob-watches, briefly conferring over the possibility of going to Mrs Jardine’s, but they soon agree that Apollonia is unlikely to be available at this hour. In any case, William gets the impression that, despite singing the praises of her exotic flavour, they’ve sampled it too recently, and hanker for something different.

‘So what do you fancy?’ says Ashwell. ‘Mrs Terence’s is nearby …’

‘It’s half past nine,’ says Bodley. ‘Bess and … whatsername – the Welsh one – will be taken, and I don’t much care for the others. And you know what Mrs Terence is like: she won’t let you leave once you’re in.’